How to Remember Reconstruction

The drama of the era happened all across the country. But Americans walk past momentous places and never recognize their role in our history during the period after the Civil War.

By Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur

Dr. Downs and Dr. Masur are the authors of the National Historical Landmark Theme Study on Reconstruction.

Nov. 16, 2018

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Jubilee Hall, built in 1876 to serve the growing number of freedmen on the campus of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., is an example of the educational and religious transformation of Reconstruction. CreditCreditRaymond Boyd/Getty Images

Many contemporary controversies over issues like voting rights and the scope of the government have their origins in the period following the Civil War. That era, known as Reconstruction, is one of the most contentious in this nation’s history, and also one of the most misunderstood.

Congress can help fix that by passing the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park Act before the end of the year. The bill, passed by the House in September and now under consideration in the Senate,would empower the National Park Service to connect Reconstruction sites all around the country; encourage visitors to talk about Reconstruction at local historical sites; and help convey the full story of how America was remade after the Civil War.

Reconstruction started in the early days of the Civil War. As United States forces entered the South, enslaved African Americans immediately pressed for freedom. They escaped to Union lines, demanded pay for their work, petitioned for their rights and served the Union war effort as laborers and soldiers. Some four million African Americans built new lives in freedom during the postwar Reconstruction era — reuniting families separated by slavery, building churches, founding schools and serving in government.

From 1865 to 1870, Congress passed, and the states ratified, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which permanently transformed the country. These Republican-led initiatives promised freedom, citizenship, due process and equal protection to everyone on American soil, and also prohibited racial discrimination in voting. These constitutional changes were so momentous that, in 2017, President Barack Obama called Reconstruction the nation’s Second Founding.

Yet many white Americans refused to accept the reforms. Southern Democrats opposed racial equality and used violence, intimidation and fraud to strip African Americans of their newfound constitutional rights. They organized groups like the Ku Klux Klan and unleashed a reign of terror to keep blacks away from the ballot box. They also passed seemingly race-neutral laws that depressed black voter turnout through literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses and new registration systems.

For decades, historians and figures in popular culture erased or distorted Reconstruction, representing the period as an unmitigated failure while celebrating the establishment of professed white supremacy regimes in Southern states. The film “Birth of a Nation” is perhaps most notorious for doing this, but textbooks also twisted the story, making the era’s democratic experiments appear misguided and even tragic. Now, the period is often ignored or misrepresented in school curricula.

The National Park Service, which manages historic sites and interprets history all over the country, can address this. It is the steward of dozens of parks that commemorate the Civil War era, yet its only unit dedicated to Reconstruction was created two years ago, when President Obama established the Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort, S.C. The bill would turn this site into a national park, helping it attract visitors and contributing to its permanence and accessibility.

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Dunleith House, an antebellum mansion in Natchez, Miss., where John Roy Lynch was a slave before the Civil War. After the war, he moved elsewhere in Natchez, was elected to Congress, and wrote two important books about Reconstruction.CreditDeAgostini/Getty Images

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Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The Cabildo, left, which is now part of the Louisiana State Museum, was the site of a failed attack on the Republican-supported Metropolitan Police, who were headquartered there, by white Democratic vigilantes. CreditEducation Images/UIG via Getty Images

More significantly, the bill expands the nation’s sense of where it can learn this history. It would establish the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network, based on similar networks Congress has created for the Civil Rights Movement and the Underground Railroad. These networks foster collaboration within national parks and allow the agency to work with state and local governments and private parties interested in commemorating and interpreting American history.

The Reconstruction network could stitch together disconnected places where Reconstruction history happened.We wrote the National Historical Landmark Theme Study on Reconstruction for the service in 2017 and identified 24 National Historic Landmarks that could contribute to our understanding of that era. And we found dozens more sites, many in Southern cities, where important buildings have been preserved — like the Green-Meldrim House in Savannah, Ga., where in 1865 Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman discussed Reconstruction with a delegation of 20 black leaders. We also identified buildings on campuses of several historically black colleges founded during Reconstruction, including Hampton University in Virginia and Alcorn State in Mississippi.

The drama of Reconstruction happened on farms and plantations across the South, where freedwomen and freedmen began working for wages or shares of the crops; in hamlets and crossroads where African American men voted for the first time; in State Capitol buildings, where legislatures met to remake state constitutions; and in cities where African Americans demanded equal access to streetcars and theaters. Across the country, Americans debated the future of their communities and the country as a whole.

Today, Americans walk past places where such events took place and never recognize how much of the nation’s history was formed during Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Era National Historic Network promises to reveal historical connections across the nation and to help Americans comprehend a history that is both inspiring and chastening.

Gregory P. Downs, a professor of history at University of California, Davis, is the author, most recently, of “After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War.” Kate Masur, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, recently republished John E. Washington’s “They Knew Lincoln,” the first book to address President Lincoln’s relationship with African Americans.